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The Fear of Learning

"Informed public debate becomes impossible when some parties refuse to read the material under dispute... Its is nearly impossible to breach this epistemic divide with good arguments because of the fear that reading will introduce confusion into the reader's mind or bring her into direct contact with the devil... They are skeptical of the academy for fear that intellectual debates may well confuse them about the values they hold. Their refusal to care much about consistency, to base their phrases and making them into lightning rods, however are all finally a refusal to think critically." - Judith Butler, Who's Afraid of Gender?

One of my biggest problems with "Christianity" (in its various forms) is how it often encourages an environment which is afraid of learning things which are uncomfortable. Scientific thinking can often be characterized as something that is directly at odds with faith and belief. faith and belief will often take precedent over uncomfortable information.

I've found that the process of labeling something as "dangerous" separates yourself from the something you've labeled. Instead of encouraging understanding, it encourages disgust and fear. It keeps us from understanding the subject, often creating straw men of the topics are people at hand. "They are blind to the truth." "They need to be saved from their ignorance." "Science will never understand the truth of what God is."

It does not help that many of the beliefs of "Christianity" are extremely entangled with the sources of meaning in a persons life. Every time new information conflicts with a held belief, a existential crisis unfolds. Usually the only way to mitigate this is by reforming the beliefs which were thought to be so imitable. Then we were "simply mistaken about the true form of god's wisdom." and we try again... and again... For me there are too many incongruities between what I have observed and learned, and what Christianity claims the truth of reality to be.

It is a highly self destructive mental environment in which I have no desire to join in again. understanding "evil" (what is evil exactly? as a metaphysical category. often "evil" is just a label for the misunderstood.) and accepting the "evil" within yourself leads to a fuller mental image of reality. fear leads to a closeted, constricted, reactionary, and predatory lifestyle.